In the pursuit of social business venture an empirical study

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

LE THANH TRUC

IN THE PURSUIT OF SOCIAL BUSINESS VENTURE:
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

PHD THESIS

Ho Chi Minh City, July 2021


LE THANH TRUC

IN THE PURSUIT OF SOCIAL BUSINESS VENTURE:
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

ISB. PhD1
PHD THESIS

SUPERVISORS:
1. Associate Professor Ngo Viet Liem
2. Associate Professor Tran Ha Minh Quan

Ho Chi Minh City, July 2021


iii

ABSTRACT

Purpose – The purpose of this dissertation is to clarify two separate objectives:
(1) We develop a cognitive-affect model of social entrepreneurship that begins with
empathy (i.e. perspective taking and empathic concern) and progresses through
prosocial behavior to social entrepreneurship intention. We further conduct two
contingencies – namely entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation and exploitation that moderate the proposed relationships (paper 1).
(2) We propose two mechanisms as to how perceived entrepreneurial passion of
employees impact on their creativity. The first mechanism involves the mediating
role of creative process engagement in the perceived passion-creativity linkage. The
second one, we focus on the moderating role of mindfulness in the mediating pathway
(paper 2).
Design/methodology/approach – This dissertation consists of two separate surveys on
social entrepreneurship in Vietnam.
(1) Our sampling frame includes would-be entrepreneurs. We utilize variance-based
SEM to examine the psychometric properties of focal constructs. We also use Baron
and Kenny (1986), SPSS macro PROCESS to test the proposed hypothesis.
(2) The dyads of employees and supervisors or founders of social venture are sampled
to fill out our survey. The empirical findings rely on Partial least squares structural
equation modelling (PLS-SEM).


Findings and contributions
(1) For the first study: First, our findings highlight the significance of including both
cognitive and emotional aspects of empathy (i.e., perspective taking and empathic
concern respectively) in prosocial decision making in social entrepreneurship
context. Secondly, our findings enrich existing theory and research by
highlighting the essential role of prosocial behavior as a modus operandi through
which perspective taking and empathic concern are linked to social
entrepreneurship intention. Lastly, our study is the first to broaden the focus of
empathy in social entrepreneurship research.
(2) For the second study: First, our study extends the literature by demonstrating that

entrepreneurial passion influences employee creativity via creative process
engagement. Secondly, our study confirms with prior studies that have empirically
demonstrated the efficacy of mindfulness to improve employee creativity.
Practical implications
(1) For the first study: First, our findings recommend that the ability to sense others’
thoughts and feeling are of paramount importance in identifying and supporting
promising social entrepreneurs. Secondly, managers’ understanding of how
prosocial behavior intervenes the relationship between empathy and social
entrepreneurial intention suggests that prosocial behavior can be broadened and
deepened by appropriate training programs. Lastly, managers should also note that
opportunity contingencies shape the impact of prosocial behavior on social


entrepreneurial intention by accentuating the role of opportunity evaluation and
opportunity exploitation.
(2) For the second study: Firstly, our study suggests that employees with high
entrepreneurial passion are more likely to get engaged on the creative process and
subsequently, produce more novel and useful ideas. Secondly, employees are more
familiar and are more interested to the activities related to inventing and
developing as those activities are related to their current occupation than
founding. Third, our study provides a more specific guideline for management in
adopting mindfulness and entrepreneurial passion within the company, especially
to improve creativity.
Research limitations
(1) For the first study: First, we cannot make conclusions on the causal order of the
observed relationships because of the cross-sectional nature of the study. The
second concerns the limited scope of this study, which focuses on undergraduate
and postgraduate students, thus limiting the generalizability of the findings. Third,
future research could enhance our understanding of the indirect effect of empathy
by examining other types of employee attitudes and behaviors.

(2) For the second study: First, the context of this study is limited to social ventures in
Vietnam. Second and also related to the context, the sample of this study only
involves social ventures which have a distinct characteristics compare to the
general commercial venture. Lastly, future studies should examine various
positive emotions within the job context and examine their relationship with
creativity.


STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION
I certify that any content in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree
at this or any other institution.
I also certify that dissertations is prepared by me. Any help that I have received in my
research work has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all sources and
literature used are adequately indicated in the reference.
Le Thanh Truc


ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, I would like to thank sincerely to The ISB.PhD1 Program, The ISB board in
Viet Nam and all the professors who have been helping me a lot to equip me the
intellectual knowledge, the most favorable environment conditions during the study and
implementation of this thesis.
With respect and deep gratitude, I would like to express my great gratitude to Assoc.
Prof. Ngo Viet Liem, Assoc. Prof. Tran Ha Minh Quan – my supervisors, and Assoc.
Prof. Nguyen Dinh Tho for their instruction, enthusiastic helping, intensive support,
caring and oriented advises on my work.
Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the organizations,
individuals and businesses which have collaborated to share information, give me a lot
of resources, responses and useful material for the subject of my study, especially for
the fulfilling of research questionnaires. Without these help, I could not believe that

my study would come to an end as today.
Lastly, I would like to send my deep gratitude to my family, friends, colleagues who
have encouraged and supported me very much during the learning process, work and
completion of this thesis.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
July 14h 2020
Le Thanh Truc


LIST PUBLICATIONS RELATED TO THE THESIS
Study 1.
Truc Thanh Le, Thi Nguyet Que Nguyen, Quan Ha Minh Tran (2017). When Giving is
Good for Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship. Australian and New Zealand
Marketing Academy (ANZMAC), 949-952, ISBN: 1447-3275. Paper to be
presented at Anzmac 2017, Melbourne, Australia.
Le, T. T., Nguyen, T. N. Q., & Tran, Q. H. M. (2020). When Giving is Good for
Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship. Australasian Marketing Journal, 28, 253262.
Study 2.
Truc Thanh Le, Quan Ha Minh Tran (2020). Improving employee creativity through
entrepreneurial passion and mindfulness: An insight from the broaden-and-build
theory. International Conference on Business and Finance (ICBF), 464 – 480,
ISBN 978-604-301-028-2.
Le, T. T., & Tran, Q. H. M. (2020). Improving Employee Creativity Through
Entrepreneurial Passion and Mindfulness: An Insight from the Broaden-andBuild Theory. Australasian Marketing Journal, under review.


LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1: Conceptual Model 1................................................................................14
Figure 1.2: Conceptual Model 2.................................................................................19
Figure 2.1: Conceptual Model....................................................................................36

Figure 2.2: Interaction of prosocial behavior and opportunity evaluation on social
entrepreneurship intention...........................................................................................45
Figure 2.3: Interaction of prosocial behavior and opportunity exploitation on social
entrepreneurship intention...........................................................................................45
Figure 3.1: Research Framework................................................................................55


LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1: Demographic characteristics of respondents (n=537)................................38
Table 2.2: Construct means, standard deviations, and correlations.............................39
Table 2.3: Measurement model and results.................................................................40
Table 2.4: Structural model results.............................................................................42
Table 2.5: Path analysis results with cognitive empathy.............................................43
Table 2.6: Path analysis results with emotional empathy............................................44
Table 3.1a: Demographic characteristics of founders or supervisors..........................63
Table 3.1b: Demographic characteristics of employees..............................................63
Table 3.2: Scale items and latent variable evaluation..................................................64
Table 3.3. Construct means, standard deviations, and correlations.............................68
Table 3.4: Summary of structural model results.........................................................70


ABBREVIATIONS
AVE: Average Variance Extracted.
CI: Confidence Interval.
CMV: Common Method Variance.
CPE:

Creative

Engagement

CR:

process
Composite

Reliabilities.
EC: Employee Creativity.
ECN: Empathic Concern.
EPT: Emotional Empathy.
GQ: General Questions.
OEV: Opportunity Evaluation.
OEX: Opportunity Exploitation.
OLS: Ordinal Least Square.
PB: Prosocial Behavior.
PD: Passion for Developing.
PF: Passion for Founding.
PI: Passion for Inventing.
PLS: Partial Least Square.


MAR: Marker Variable.
MF: Mindfulness.
NGOs: Non-Governmental Organizations.
SD: Standard Deviations.
SE: Social Entrepreneurship.
SEI: Social Entrepreneurial Intentions.
SEM: Structural Equation Model.
VIF: Variance Inflation Factor.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW.........................1
1.1 Background and Research Objectives..................................................................... 1
1.2 Literature Review.................................................................................................... 8
1.2.1 Social Entrepreneurship................................................................................. 8
1.2.2 Literature review for study 1........................................................................ 10
Empathy, Prosocial Behavior, and Social Entrepreneurship Intent......................10
Social Entrepreneurial Opportunity Evaluation and Exploitation........................12
1.2.3 Literature review for study 2........................................................................ 14
Employee Creativity and Entrepreneurial Passion............................................... 14
Creative Process Engagement.............................................................................. 15
Mindfulness.......................................................................................................... 16
The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions...........................................17
1.3 Research Methods................................................................................................. 19
1.3.1 Research methods for study 1...................................................................... 20
1.3.2 Research methods for study 2...................................................................... 21
1.4 Contributions......................................................................................................... 22
1.5 Thesis structure..................................................................................................... 24
CHAPTER 2. STUDY 1............................................................................................ 25
2.1 Introduction........................................................................................................... 25
2.2 Literature review and research hypotheses............................................................ 27
2.2.1 Empathy, prosocial behavior, and social entrepreneurship intention............27


2.2.2 Social entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation and exploitation...................34
2.3 Research methods.................................................................................................. 37
2.3.1 Measurement instrument.............................................................................. 37
2.3.2 Samples and data collection......................................................................... 38

2.4 Results................................................................................................................... 38
2.4.1 Common method variance........................................................................... 38
2.4.2 Psychometric assessment of focal constructs............................................... 39
2.4.3 Hypothesis testing........................................................................................ 41
2.5 Discussion and conclusion.................................................................................... 46
2.5.1 Theoretical implications.............................................................................. 46
2.5.2 Managerial implications.............................................................................. 47
2.5.3 Limitation and future research..................................................................... 49
CHAPTER 3. STUDY 2............................................................................................ 50
3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................... 50
3.2 Theoretical Development...................................................................................... 53
3.2.1 The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions.................................53
3.2.2 Employee Creativity and Entrepreneurial Passion....................................... 55
3.2.3 The Mediating Role of Creative Process Engagement.................................57
3.2.4 The Moderating Role of Mindfulness.......................................................... 58
3.3 Research Method................................................................................................... 61
3.3.1 Data Collection and Sample........................................................................ 61
3.3.2 Measurement Instrument............................................................................. 61
3.4 Results................................................................................................................... 62


3.4.1 Sample profile.............................................................................................. 62
3.4.2 Assessment of measurement model............................................................. 64
3.4.3 Hypothesis testing........................................................................................ 68
3.5 General Discussion................................................................................................ 70
3.5.1 Theoretical Contributions and Managerial Implications..............................70
3.5.2 Limitations and future research.................................................................... 73
CHAPTER 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION............................................... 75
4.1 Summary............................................................................................................... 75
4.2 Discussion and conclusion.................................................................................... 78

4.3 Theoretical Contributions and Managerial Implications....................................... 80
4.4 Limitations and future research............................................................................. 82
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................84
APPENDICES......................................................................................................... 109


16

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter describes a broad overview of the research. This chapter begins with
background and research objectives. Chapter 1 also clarifies the significance of the
research. The thesis has two separate research objectives which are solved by two
corresponding research methods. Therefore, this thesis includes two separate studies
(study 1 and study 2). Finally, contributions of the research are presented.
1.1 Background and Research Objectives
While social problems and create social value has always been an important and
global issue of market economies (Hall, 1987; Thompson et al., 2000), the term
“social entrepreneurship” is a more recent definition (Dacin et al., 2016). Social
entrepreneurship is seen as different forms of entrepreneurship, which focus and
create social value than capturing economic value (Mair & Marti, 2006). Therefore,
social entrepreneurship is considered to be a truly interesting and fruitful research
field.
However, social entrepreneurship term still has been poorly defined (Mair & Marti,
2006), variety of meanings and lacks of unifying paradigm (like entrepreneurship)
(Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). “Despite this increasing academic interest, the
management field lacks a conceptual understanding of the economic role and logic of
action of social entrepreneurs” (Dacin et al., 2010; Santos, 2012).
Social entrepreneurship is distinct from other forms or entrepreneurship (Dacin et al.,
2016) and can be promoted by using variety of theoretical lenses combination of
different research methods (Mair & Marti, 2006). This has been seen as a unique

opportunity for researchers from other field like: spychology, sociology and
organizational theory rethink concept and assumption. For the future promising


research directions, scholars can attend to five possible aspects: institutions and social
movements, networks, culture, identity and image, and cognition (Dacin et al., 2016).
In these aspects, examining the characteristics of social entrepreneurs (Certo & Miller,
2008) and the ideas of opportunity-recognition are encountered (Peredo & McLean,
2006). Because the social entrepreneurship is driven by its mission, while the social
entrepreneurs are often driven by their passion (Bornstein, 2004), and the leadership
skills (Thompson, Alvy & Lees, 2000). Future research could also elaborate on the
process or behaviors of social entrepreneurs that make the venture success (Certo &
Miller, 2008) or find out the personality and cognitive schemas of social entrepreneurs
(Roper & Cheney, 2005).
We believe that a cognitive perspective and personality of the social entrepreneurs
(empathy, passion, leadership skills, …) have been necessary for the study of social
entrepreneurship theory (Dacin et al., 2016). Specially, researches on empathy and
passion aspects are increasingly concerned.
The fact that Vietnam begins to enter the threshold of low middle-income country, this
is a new development opportunity for the nation. That means capital in the Vietnamese
economy has been more abundant and proactive than before, and poverty has been
significantly improved among the majority of the population. However, this has also
led to changes in the humanitarian and social development policies of countries and
international organizations in Vietnam. We have witnessed the departure of a number
of bilateral development organizations such as SIDA, Ford Foundation; or gradually
reducing ODA funding from Vietnam to move to poorer countries (Denmark, UK). If
we continue to depend on external aid, Vietnam will face the risk of serious shortage
of

capital for community development activities in the near future. Meanwhile, the
mobilization of funding and community capital in Vietnam is quite limited. A recent
study by the Asia Foundation (2011) on charitable donations in Vietnam shows that
the potential contribution of people and businesses is quite large, but due to the lack of
formal charity channels and lack of policies. Appropriately, most charitable activities
are spontaneous, small in scope and limited in small communities. Lack of funding for
operations is a great pressure on thousands of Vietnamese NGOs and community
development projects in the near future.
Currently, social enterprises in Vietnam operate in many different industries and
fields, but the rates are not uniform. According to the Research Report on the Current
State of Social Enterprises in Vietnam, the most popular field in which Vietnamese
social enterprises operate is agriculture - accounting for 35%; followed by health
(9%), education (9%) and the environment (7%); child care 5%; jobs and skills 4%;
retail 4%; business support 3%; industry (web; design, printing) 2%; health care 2%;
financial support and services 2%; social care 2%; traffic 2%; culture and
entertainment 1% and other fields 35%. It can be seen that social enterprises in
Vietnam have quite rich fields of activity, but still focus on the agricultural sector
mainly. Therefore, the field and scope of activities of social enterprises in Vietnam are
not equal; It is still quite modest in terms of its size, quantity, revenue and its
contributions to the society.
In summary, social entrepreneurship has a lot of potential for developed countries and
in Vietnam, it has not been paid enough attention. Therefore, researching on social
entrepreneurship in Vietnam is extremely necessary and linked to the country's


sustainable development goals. Therefore, researches that focus on the empathy and
passion aspects of social entrepreneurship in Vietnam seem more interesting.
The purpose of this thesis is to clarify two separate research objectives which are
developed in study 1 (paper 1) and study 2 (paper 2):
1. Exploring mechanism that how the empathy influence on the social

entrepreneurship intention via prosocial behavior, and the moderating effects of
opportunity evaluation, exploitation.
2. Exploring mechanism that how the social entrepreneurs’ passion affect
employee’s creativity via creative process engagement, which is moderated by
mindfulness.
For the first objective, we build the cognitive model with empathy, prosocial behavior
and social entrepreneurship intention concept.
Understanding the role that empathy plays in social entrepreneurship has been a
fruitful venue of academic inquiry (Mair & Noboa, 2006; Short et al., 2009; Hockerts,
2017). Empathy is defined as “an individual’s ability to imagine what feelings another
person has [cognitive empathy or perspective taking] or a tendency to respond to
another being’s mental state emotionally or compassionately [emotional empathy or
empathic concern]” (Hockerts, 2017, p. 108). Social entrepreneurial behavior refers to
the discovery or identification of opportunities to create social impact through the
generation of market and nonmarket disequilibria (Hockerts, 2017, p. 105). From this
reason, researchers have to motivated to find out the direct causal link between
empathy and social entrepreneurial intention (Hockerts, 2017; Ip et al., 2017; Lacap et
al., 2018;


Aure, 2018). Yet, research has left a fundamental question unanswered: through which
mechanisms empathy is related to social entrepreneurial intention.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the mechanisms through which empathy
is associated with social entrepreneurial intention. Premised upon altruistic motivation
theory and theory of planned behavior, we propose that two mechanisms, which
combine and interact, are fundamental to connecting empathy to social entrepreneurial
intention. The first mechanism involves the mediating role of prosocial behavior in the
empathy-intention linkage. Prosocial behavior is defined as a voluntary behavior
“performed to benefit others, rather than to benefit the self” (Twenge et al., 2007, p.
56). Attention to prosocial behavior in extant literature has focused primarily on when

and why people help, emphasizing empathy as a critical aspect of human emotion in
promoting prosocial behavior (Penner et al., 2005; Rameson et al., 2011). In the
current study, we expand to examine the prosocial behavior as a mediating role in
explaining how empathy impact on social entrepreneurship.
The second mechanism we propose in this study focuses on the moderating role of
entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation and exploitation in the aforementioned
mediating pathway. We argue that opportunity evaluation and opportunity exploitation
create the conditions that will mediate individuals to engage in social
entrepreneurship. A person also might choose to become a social entrepreneur
although with a minimum level of empathy and prosocial behavior after facing a
particular social problem (Mair & Noboa, 2006). The extant literature, however, is
silent on the role of opportunity evaluation and opportunity exploitation in social
entrepreneurship development (Hockert, 2006). Thus, we suggest that opportunity
evaluation and opportunity


exploitation create conditions that make empathy and prosocial behavior will choose
to engage in social entrepreneurship.
For the second objective, we build the model based on perception of entrepreneurial
passion, creative process engagement and employee creativity concept.
Employee creativity has been long associated with company success because
creativity leads to innovation, effectiveness and survival (Amabile, 1997; Shalley et
al., 2004). Creativity is generally defined as the production of novel and useful ideas
(Amabile, 1997). Many companies have been relying on employee creativity to survive
and remain competitive, ranging from multi-billion dollar commercial companies such
as Apple Inc., Gucci Group, Bain & Co, and Procter & Gambler (Ng & Yam, 2019) to
social ventures (Eleanor & Carter, 2007; Rostiani et al., 2014). Therefore, one major
concern of research on creativity is to identify factors that promote employee creativity
(Henker et al., 2015).
Prior studies have revealed the role of individual and organizational aspects as well as

the interaction between them on employee creativity (Oldham & Cummings, 1996). For
example, a number of empirical studies have found that leadership style (Gong et al.,
,

2009; Wang et al., 2017), role stress (Coelho et al., 2011), and organization creativity
,

climate (Oldham & Cummings, 1996) significantly predict creativity. In addition,
several individual variables such as creativity personal characteristic (Oldham &
Cummings, 1996), employee learning orientation (Gong et al., 2009), and employee
intrinsic motivation (Tierney et al., 1999) were also found to influence employee
creativity. In general, those studies assume while individual aspect is not manageable


and can only be identified whereas contextual variables are more manageable to the
organization (Oldham & Cummings, 1996).
Recently, researchers have been establishing links between creativity and two other
constructs, as such entrepreneurial characteristic of the employees that often termed as
intrapreneurship (Bierwerth et al., 2015; Gawke et al., 2017; Kuratko et al., 1990) and
mindfulness (Lebuda et al., 2016; De Dreu et al., 2012). Interestingly and more
importantly, conceptual paper and empirical studies show that both constructs are
malleable personal tendency and hence, is more manageable for organization
(Rigtering & Weitzel, 2013; Zahra, 1991; Colzato et al., 2012). For example, previous
studies show that employee entrepreneurial characteristic is affected by organizational
values, formal organizational structures, company strategy (Zahra, 1991) and
transferrable from the leaders (Cardon, 2008). In another separate study, mindfulness
is shown to be enhanced through meditation training (Colzato et al., 2012).
Consistently, more companies such as Google and Nike have been investing on
mindfulness program (Dube, 2019). Therefore, the current research aims to examining
the link between intrapreneurship, mindfulness and creativity.

Although the influence of entrepreneurial characteristic and mindfulness on creativity
have been widely studies, a closer look to the literature reveals some important
research gaps. First, empirical studies examining the link between mindfulness,
intrapreneurship and creativity mainly focus on the direct effects and thus, lack of the
explaining mechanism (Bierwerth et al., 2015; Lebuda et al., 2016; Henker et al.,
2015). Second, literature on intrapreneurship suggests that intrapreneurship is a
multidimensional construct and thus, examining the dimension that taps into
creativity is deemed


important (Felicio, et al., 2012; Dess et al., 1999). This paper focus on
examining entrepreneurial passion as literature suggests that entrepreneurial passion at
the heart of entrepreneurial characteristic (Cardon, et al., 2005; Maier & Zenovia
2011), yet any empirical examination on the influence of entrepreneurial passion on
creativity had barely conducted (Felicio et al., 2012).
Built upon the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001), this
paper aims to fill the research gaps within the literature on creativity by looking at the
emotional aspect of intrapreneurship (i.e. entrepreneurial passion) and further
proposes that creative engagement process mediates the relationship between
intrapreneurship, mindfulness and employee creativity. Subsequently, we also propose
that the indirect relationship between entrepreneurial passion and creativity is
moderated by mindfulness. In particular, the influence of entrepreneurial passion on
creative engagement process increases when the employee mindfulness is high. This
study is expected to contribute theoretically by empirically demonstrating that the
interaction between entrepreneurial passion and mindfulness positively influence
creative engagement process.
1.2 Literature Review
1.2.1 Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship definition is “entrepreneurial activity with an embedded social
purpose” (Austin et al., 2006), has become an important global economic concept and

scale (Dacin et al., 2010; Mair & Marti, 2006; Zahra et al., 2008; Santos, 2012). Social
entrepreneurship as a process that combine economic and social value creation (Mair
& Marti, 2006).


As we mention above, the concept of social entrepreneurship has been taken on
variety of meanings for different people and researchers (Dees, 1998). One group of
researchers suggests that social entrepreneurship is non-for-profit strategy to create
social value (Austin et al., 2003). A second group of researchers refers it as
commercial businesses (Sagawa & Segal, 2000). And a third group views social
entrepreneurship as a way to reduce social problems and enhance social
transformation (Alvord et al., 2004).
In general, whether social entrepreneurs choose a not-for-profit or a for-profit strategy
often depends on the specific business model and the social needs. Today, social
entrepreneurs can operate enterprises with two business strategies: (1) Non-profit with
earned income, (2) For-profit with mission-driven strategies (Abu-Saifan, 2012).
However,

main

difference

between

business

entrepreneurship

and

social

entrepreneurship is the priority to social value creation versus economic wealth
creation, rather than on profit versus not-for-profit (Mair & Marti, 2006). In social
entrepreneurship, social wealth creation is the central objective, while economic value
creation is needed to make sure the development and financial self-sufficiency.
Definitions social entrepreneurship is viewed as a process or behavior which involves
the innovative and combination of resources to match social needs. While the social
entrepreneurs is understood as the founder of the innovation; and social enterprises is
social entrepreneurship’s outcome (Mair & Marti, 2006).
As we view social entrepreneurship as a process in which the social entrepreneur
combines limited resources to create value. Actually, in the process of combining
these resources, social entrepreneurs try to explore and exploit opportunities to create
social value and adapt social change or match social needs. Finally, social
entrepreneurs as a


one kind of entrepreneur (Dees, 1998) try to push innovation in organization in the
process of offering services and products.
“Social entrepreneurship is exercised where some person or persons recognizing and
exploiting opportunities to create this value, employing innovation” (Peredo & McLean,
2006). Therefore, we support that it is necessary to elaborate about the entrepreneurs’
characteristics (empathy, passion), exploit opportunity, employees’ innovation in
social entrepreneurship.
1.2.2 Literature review for study 1
Empathy, Prosocial Behavior, and Social Entrepreneurship Intention
Empathy is a multidimensional construct with cognitive and emotional dimensions
(Davis, 1983; Bettencourt et al., 2001). The cognitive component is named
perspective taking, which refers to an ability to sense how people think and act toward
each other. Empathic concern is considered the emotional component, which refers to

a person’s emotional response to others’ experiences (Eisenberg, Spinrad & Sadovsky,
2006; Wieseke, Geigenmüller & Kraus, 2012). These other-oriented emotions may
include the feelings of pity, sorrow, compassion, warmth, tenderness, soft-heartedness,
sympathy, and the like (Padilla-Walker, Nielson & Day, 2016). Consequently, whereas
the cognitive empathy (or perspective taking) helps people to understand others’
perceived needs and motivations, the emotional empathy (or empathic concern)
enables them to express their concern for the welfare of others, both resulting in
altruistic behaviours (Nguyen, Tran & Chylinski, 2020).
Building upon the altruistic motivation theory, a well-established body of research
provides significant evidence that empathy is a necessary condition that leads people
to